


martin gets a cat, and some other things happen

by thesoundofyourheartinyourhead



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Archivist Martin Blackwood, Demisexual Martin, M/M, Multi, The Mechanisms Were The Archivist's College Band, i'm not sure where this is going., martin is happy for a bit to make up for the shitstorm that is his life, me? giving all the characters in my fics cats? absolutely., that's not the most important divergence but it's there, this is just a reason to write for my ocs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:08:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26033944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesoundofyourheartinyourhead/pseuds/thesoundofyourheartinyourhead
Summary: Let's just pull a few strings, shall we?
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	martin gets a cat, and some other things happen

We Enter. 

The set is sparse, in that it contains Nothing. An Absence of anything, shape, light, contrast, of colour or lack of. Not darkest black or unmarred white; Nothing. If We were human, this impossibility would be nauseating. 

We turn our focus to our only player- the Spider. It is weaving frantically, wild tapestries being composed and dissolved in an instant, in every colour that exists, and more that don't. A face. A book. A Mouth. A hand. A guitar. An Eye. Each slightly smaller than before. 

We Watch, for a long, long time, as the threads evaporate. 

Eventually, the Spider has only a single strand, and it loops it endlessly through its many, many legs, playing cat’s cradle as it speaks. 

SPIDER: (thoughtfully) Well. That didn’t go _quite_ as expected. 

(Pause for laughter. Or wailing. We do neither.) 

SPIDER: (cont.) I mean- it was _fine_. But it could be a little more interesting. Hmm. (pause.) Alright. 

The Spider tears apart the strand and begins to twist and stretch and braid, pulling new thread into the old. The Spider looks pleased, as much as a spider can look anything. 

SPIDER: Let’s try this again! With _feeling_ this time! 

The Spider weaves. Somewhere, a curtain opens. 

We Exit. 

The first time Martin Blackwood is Lonely, he is eight, and his room is too big. 

“Mum?” he yells again, even though he’s supposed to let Mum sleep. “Mum?” 

He does not yell for Dad. Dad’s gone. Mum started falling and Dad went away, and Mum said he wasn’t coming back. And then she told him to go away, so he did. And now his room is too big. There’s only a window and a bed and a little bookcase in this room, all close together, but when he reaches to touch the shelf his arm hangs in empty air. It’s cold. Why is it cold? It’s the summer holidays. That thought is what spurs him to leave his now vacuous bed. Logic. Mum’s sick and being cold will make it worse. He needs to turn the heating on. 

Wrapping his dressing gown around him, he hops off onto the old beige carpet and shivers. The carpet feels vaguely damp between his toes, like he’d spilled water on it, and when he looks down he is up to his shins in a pale mist, thin tendrils curling around his ankles. His whole too-big room is that same shade of pale. So is outside the window, even though it had been sunny not ten minutes before. _Am I letting the fog in?_ he wonders, but the latch is jammed shut as it always has been. The only sound in the room is Martin’s jaw jumping up to meet his teeth, even though there should be lunchtime traffic around now. He’s... tired. The kind of tired you get when you toss and turn for hours but can’t quite get comfortable. Maybe he should sit. Martin shakes himself roughly. No. He needs to turn the heating on. 

The door takes longer to walk to than it should (two steps) but when he looks back at his bed it is still the same distance away, and yet, still... further. Martin can feel a clenching in his guts like when people argue in front of him, and he shakes himself again. Go. Help. Mum. 

The door opens to the hallway, and it has changed too. The mist from his room spills out, but if anything it looks like there is more, not less, reaching up to his knees, and the pale colour is thicker, so he has to squint to see his toes. His foot feels clammy against the cold wood floor. He’s been walking for a minute, but the hall is still too long. The doors seem _enormous,_ and almost like there are more of them than before, but when Martin stops to count there are only ever three. He reaches a door, finally, his Mum’s bedroom. It looms over him like the doors at school. Martin breathes, preparing himself for the yelling he will get for waking Mum up for nothing, and knocks. 

The hallway simply absorbs the sound. Martin knocks again, louder, but there’s no response. Martin, trembling, goes on tiptoe to press his lips to the keyhole. 

“Mum?” he hisses. There is nothing. Martin has to hold on to the doorknob, cold and slippery, to keep his position. _Maybe I’m shrinking,_ he thinks suddenly. Like in _Alice in Wonderland_ , when she ate the magic cake. He had been so sad, when he realised with her that the key, while now the perfect size for her to use, was also now completely out of her reach on the newly gigantic table, that he’d had to put the book down and cuddle his blanket for a few minutes. Dad had laughed at him for that. 

Martin feels himself losing grip of the slippery doorknob, and knows with a sudden, perfect clarity, that if he lets go of it again, he won’t get it back. With a whispered apology, he twists his wrist and pushes with all his strength. It is like trying to open the door in a vacuum, and when he finally squeezes through it slams, almost rattling in the frame. Martin flinches- Mum has to be awake now. The whole block has to be awake now. But there is nothing; no broom thumping from below, no cry of protest from next door. And no Mum, yelling. 

No Mum. 

The room is empty. 

Martin checks even so, the fist in his stomach twisting and squeezing intermittently. The bed is made, and cold. There aren’t any pictures, but it was like that before. Mum threw them away because Dad was in them. All of his hairs are standing up, and Martin can see his breath. He seems so very loud in this swallowing stillness. Like he is disturbing something by daring to take up space. Martin moves toward the door and feels the fog shift reluctantly around him, trying to settle once more on his goose-pimpled flesh. He shivers as he twists the doorknob. The door opens much more easily from this side, for some reason, even though it still opens inward. 

The hallway on the other side is wrong. 

It is filled with the same thick mist, so it is hard to pick out at first, but it isn’t even the same hallway. The walls, when Martin reaches them, are patterned impersonally with cream paint instead of off-white wallpaper, and finely speckled with beadlets of water. The bulb feebly warding off the drifting grey is bare and sickly yellow. There are four doors, all made of a different wood, with handles instead of knobs. It is such an effort, now, to carry on through the chill and the fear and the tiredness eating at his limbs, and he is panting as he touches the nearest door handle, iron and stinging with frost. 

And yet, he pushes forward. Because Mum will be colder than him. 

The handle acquiesces. There is less of an opposite pull, this time, but the door nudges against the floor like the frame was built in a slight dip. The room is a little like their kitchen- he could have wandered into the next flat. It is clean, but not in the way that houses in advertisements are clean. It is like the clean has been left to stale. This kitchen has not been used in a long time. Maybe ever. Without thinking, Martin lets go of the door, stepping toward the counter. It doesn’t slam, this time, but it clicks in the frame firmly. A jolt of panic pierces through the murk of his thoughts. It will change again, he knows. _You can prop it open next time_. Maybe that will do something. Martin doubts it. 

But! What’s done is done. Martin pulls open a drawer to climb up to the window. There is nothing inside it, not even dust. The countertop is frigid marble that peels from his knees as he releases the latch and sticks his head out. Nothing but solid not-colour. Martin almost expects to cough as the wall of fog pours down from the opening, but all that changes is the soupy thickness of his vision and a numbness to his terror. There are two doors in the room. He cannot remember from which he entered. 

Why was he here? Something about Mum. Yeah. Their flat wasn’t very big. If he just picks a door, eventually he’ll get somewhere he knows, and then he’ll remember what he’s looking for. 

“Einie, meenie...” Martin considers through the chatter of his teeth. “That one,” he decides, pointing arbitrarily to the left. When he climbs to the floor it is like he is swimming. It is a long time before his hand touches the wall. 

There is a sitting room next, coldly lit and cavernous. The furniture has sharp edges. The seat- because it isn’t a sofa or a couch, those would imply it was soft- doesn't look comfortable at all, and dank from moisture. A bedroom. A bathroom whose floor leeched the last feeling from his feet. A flight of stairs that last for hours. Another bedroom, bigger. Another corridor. Another, another, another. Time stills; or maybe it has just moved on without him, slipping from him intangibly. 

A dining room, he thinks, as he bumps into hard, carved wood. Not just a room people eat in, a real dining room, like in old movies. The rooms had changed skin-crawlingly, uncannily, until it occurs to Martin that he would never have had what smells like a stable in his flat. Or a gymnasium. All empty, of course, except for the fog. Funnily, though, that he knows that his home would never have had a swimming pool drained of water or not, he simply can’t remember what _would_ be. A... bed? A cupboard? He doesn’t know. He can’t remember. Why can’t he remember? Martin screws up his face to let out a sob, and the tear tracks on his cheeks crack minutely, tiny chips of ice settling with the frost on his dressing gown. He leans against the disapproving wood of a table leg, knees knocking, like in cartoons. He’s just so _tired._ He doesn't even really have the energy to cry properly, so he just lets the tears collect on his face, using his last energy to shiver. The roiling terror worming in him is still there, but that mewling desire to just- _lie down_ and close his eyes softens the edges of it, leaving him dizzy and nauseous.

He wants to sit, so he finds a chair and does. 

Martin- 

Martin? 

_Martin._

Who is that? Is he Martin? It doesn’t sound right in his head, being called Martin. Martin sounds like someone colourful and happy, someone people know, someone people care about.

It is hard to imagine anything being colourful in this sunken, lonely place.

It is hard to imagine being cared about.

The thought of this hurts to hold onto, so he lets it go. He presses his cheek against the hard, curved back. The fear is quiet, now, just a hum in the distance. He closes his eyes and feels the fog envelop him fully, lightly tousling his sweat-damp hair. It is almost like being held. He doesn’t think anyone has been close enough to hold him before. Close enough to name him. 

_“Martin!”_

He blinks languidly. Except... except that wasn’t right, was it? Everyone knows _people._ Everyone has a name. It is hard to focus on this truth, when the fog swirls insistently though his mind. That _revolutionary_ idea slips from him like sand through his fingers, but he repeats it in his head, again again again, _you have a name and people know it, you are a you and you are known, you must have a name, you are known, you are known, you are known._

“ _Maaar-tiiiin?"_ The word stretches playfully. _"Where aaaarrrrre yooouuu?”_

Martin. That was him, he was Martin. His name is Martin and someone knows him. Someone was looking for him. 

“Hello?” Martin calls, softly at first, fighting off the whispering urge to ignore the voice, to lie down and drift off again. He stands up, and the sudden pins and needles thrill every neglected nerve in his body. “Hello?” 

_“Martin! Come on, where are you, sweetheart?”_

Grandpa! Grandpa was here! 

In a sudden final burst of energy, Martin rushes to a door- any door- and flings it open, and behind it is his crowded, lived-in living room, and he leaps into his grandfather’s arms. 

“Hey, hey, why the tears?” Grandpa asks, cuddling him. “What’s the matter?” 

Martin doesn’t answer, just snuffles into the warmth of his jumper. The fog is still there, curling around him up to his legs, but it dissipates where their bodies meet. He presses closer, breathing hard, ignoring Grandpa’s questions. 

Grandpa pulls away after he calms down a bit, but keeps his hands, solid and comforting, on his shoulders. “There now, sweetheart, ‘sallright, I’m here.” He grins in that mad way only old men can, and asks slyly, “Will ice cream make you feel better?” 

Martin gasps and shakes his head wildly. “Hot chocolate! Please!” 

Grandpa laughs his rolling, rasping laugh. “It’s summer!” He squeezes his cheek, but stops and holds a palm to Martin’s forehead. “Blimey, you’re cold. Hm. Alright,” he says, wicked smile back in place. “We’ll warm you up in the dog days, then. Hot chocolate, was it?” 

“And a biscuit,” Martin adds, so Grandpa will laugh again. 

It is almost a year and a half after that the fog comes for him again. It is a drizzly grey day, diluted light filtering through the clouds. Martin stands very still, even though he wants to pull at the awful scratchy fabric of his skirt. Mum doesn’t like it when he fidgets. 

It doesn’t feel right, to try and stuff everything Grandpa was into a wooden box. To condense memories, of sunny days and lighting fires and the smell of fresh bread, and just crush it into the earth. He was the only one to listen when not-yet-Martin frowned over his clunky birth name, over odd nicknames; called him _my kid, my little soldier_ , the first to suggest using a new name, plucking one out of the air for him. _How about... Martin! How’s that? You look more like a Martin, anyway._

And now he’ll never see him again. Martin peeks over the hole at the picture perched atop the casket, framing a handsome man frowning at the camera. Who is that? _Don’t be stupid,_ Martin tells himself crossly, in a voice that sounds like Mum, _that’s just what Grandpa looked like when he was young._ But Grandpa didn’t frown like that, he was sure. The man in the picture was clean-shaven, well defined and pale. Grandpa- 

He- 

What did he look like? What was his face like? Did he ever have a face? 

_Don’t be stupid_ , Martin, says his Mum’s voice (but not his Mum, she doesn’t call him Martin, she doesn’t call him anything if she can help it), _of course he had a face._

But he can’t remember it. Martin grips the awful scrubby material of his skirt, heart racing. Grandpa had a face, eyes and eyebrows and a nose and a beard and a mouth, but when he tries to put them together in his mind, add details and colour, they just... blur. Fade. There was nothing left of his grandfather left in his head. 

But he existed, right? That’s why they were here, sitting in front of a box while a priest drones on about this pillar of the community. This upstanding man. He wasn’t an upstanding man, he was Grandpa. But who was he? 

Martin does not notice how cold it is, at first. It’s a moody day, after all. But the chill settles in all his edges, and he looks up from the grass- slowing being drained of colour, he realises- 

and he is Alone again. 

Martin starts to panic very quickly, after that. 

“Mum!” he yells. “Mum, can you hear me?” 

She can’t. Of course she can’t. The only one who ever did is in the casket. 

He stumbles around, looking for signs of anything that isn’t grass and a hole that just seems to gape wider. In the distance he sees the church. It’s something. He’s never really understood God the way everyone else seemed to, but maybe He’ll help him now. The fog clutches at him as he tries to break away- ridiculously, he wishes he had football boots with proper grip, even though he trips over every ball he comes across. He runs like in a dream, moving but never going anywhere. Behind him, he can hear the soft sounds of crumbling earth, and his foot catches over a mottled clump of weeds and it gives way and it _falls apart_ beneath him. It is almost the inverse of thinking there’s another stair when there isn’t, and so much worse. He is so close when he trips. He doesn’t bother to get up, just crawls, digging in his nails and pulling as the grass withers, as the ground turns ashy, eroding just as he hauls himself away. Three metres, two- the doorway is but an arms length now- and as safety falls away beneath him, he heaves past the frame, and the door slams shut. 

He is in a hallway. 

“Oh no,” Martin whispers. “Oh no, no, no.” 

He is lying on concrete, somehow. It is achingly cold, in a way that settles just under his skin. The fog is here too. He can’t help breathing it in. It’s everywhere. 

He’s trembling. He remembers vaguely that shaking was the muscles tensing and untensing very quickly, to warm up. But warmth doesn’t happen here. _Cold doesn’t actually exist, you know,_ Mrs Keene said once. _What we call cold is just an absence of heat_. 

Absence. That sounds right. 

What is he going to do? If he gets up and moves, he’ll get lost, and probably die. If he stays on the ground and lets the fog settle over him, he’ll be stuck and probably die. Grandpa is dead. He won’t be saved. 

No one is coming to save him. 

_You are Martin. You are a you. You are known. You are known._

Is he? Who knows him, really? Mrs Keene wouldn’t notice if there was one less face in her class. He wasn’t good at drawing like Jade or good at football like Simon, so no one would look for him at school. The neighbours would probably be glad that he wasn’t there to drop things. Mum- 

Mum needs him. She needs him to run down to the shops and make sure she doesn’t fall and cook dinner. _She_ needs him. 

Martin nods. She _needs_ him. 

“I’m getting up now,” he says to the quiet. “I’m going to open the door, and I'll walk through and Mum will be there. I love her. She needs me.” 

Nothing answers, obviously. He doesn’t let himself feel silly, let himself doubt. He nods again and opens the door. 

He is in the church. “ _Thank you_ ,” he whispers. 

“Where have you _been_?” Auntie Gloria says, stomping up to him from outside. “We’re all going home! Your mother’s been worried _sick!_ ” 

She drags him up to where Uncle Jim is helping Mum into his car. She doesn’t look very worried. She doesn’t look anything, really. That’s alright, though, he thinks, as he pours freshly boiled water into her favourite mug. He can do the worrying for both of them. 

And that's that, for a bit. At home, he works hard on looking after them, being the man of the house, and at school, he works hard on being friends with the other kids, until he realises that everyone has their friends already. So he makes friends with the teachers instead- Ms McIntyre chats to him as she shows him how to shade properly, Mr Brown smiles as he presents his lopsided fairy-cakes. On his report card, beside his mediocre marks, are the comments. _Cheerful. Polite. Happy to help. A pleasure to have in class_. He stores the cards on his bookshelves and he looks through them when the night is too quiet, when the day whines in his ears, when a careless remark leaves him sleepless for weeks. He holds those words in his heart always. 

It is more than a little pathetic. 

High school is hard. Everyone says that, but it really is. He gets spots, which are awful, and bleeds, which is worse, and it becomes very clear that no-one's his best friend here either. At best, some of the girls will let him join their group when there are odd numbers, and non-maliciously ignore him when they changed for P.E. So he learns to make himself amiable, but not so much that it draws attention, not to initiate conversations, to change in toilets or under his shirt if he had to, to _always always_ look away. And then everyone starts kissing each other and drinking and whispering about _sex_ and Martin just. It’s just not very interesting to him, even if he could afford to go to parties and do it there. When Lee Jones yells after Tonya Green _exactly_ what he finds attractive about her, he determinedly pays attention to the same parts of boys’ bodies, and then, after an interesting rumour about Jenna Moran, girls’ too. They’re fine. They’re bodies. It’s nothing like love poems. _Maybe they were just exaggerating for something to talk about._ He feels disappointed at that. He would’ve liked to feel the way they do in old books, and romcoms. 

And then he does. 

Whoops. 

He’s dropped out by then, works as a waiter in a restaurant that thought too highly of itself. The pay isn't fantastic, but it's something, and he has a few shifts a week at Tesco, so they’re managing. He keeps his head down and works hard. It’s okay. Then he gets to know Tony. 

He doesn’t think too much about her, at first. He doesn’t really talk much to anyone, not really, and he tries as best he can not to catch anyone’s eye, so they won’t notice how clumsy he is (never works). And he always feels awkward around people his age. But Tony’s just _nice_. Nice, and likes his poetry, and _really_ funny. He makes the first proper friend he’s had in years. It doesn’t occur to him that he might fall in love with her, but when he does, it's just the most natural thing in the world. 

Not that he’ll tell her that, though. 

Ever. 

_So was I just a lesbian this whole time?_ he wonders for the third time today as Tony takes a drag. (He has a vague recollection of ‘butches’, who wore men’s suits and went by men’s names. It isn’t quite right, but what other options are there?) He doesn’t smoke (too expensive, and he hates the smell) but over the past two years they’ve taken to having their breaks in the alley outside. She’s lovely to watch, as she sucks poison into her lungs- her silhouette is striking in the pale moonlight. Long blonde hair in a ponytail, creamy skin, glasses perched over an aquiline nose. How could anyone think big noses are ugly when she exists? He could write libraries about its slopes, about the angles, that Roman hook. 

Seeing him looking, she makes smoke come out of her nostrils like a dragon. Martin laughs. 

“You want one?” she asks, as she always does, waving the little box. 

“No thanks.” 

“Little Miss Perfect, aren’t you? _Ah don’t drink, ah don’t swear. Ah don’t rat mah hair. I get ill from one cigarette-_ ” She coughs in time, nudging him. He sighs, and says in his best southern accent, “Get your _filthy paws_ offa mah _silky drawers_ -” 

“ _Wouldja pull that crap with Annette?_ ” They chorus, and Tony laughs. “Still, though. You never tried it?” 

“And I never will. I promise you, Tony, before God, I will never take a drag.” 

“You don’t have to.” Tony turns away slightly, scratching her neck. “You, uh, ever heard of shotgunning?” 

Martin gives her a pained look. “If it has anything to do with alchohol, you _know_ -” 

“No, no. Just- Open your mouth.” 

Martin does so, feeling a little peculiar as she takes a drag. Then she leans over and- 

Her mouth- 

Is on his. 

Martin closes his eyes instinctively as Tony shares her breath with him, a searing, dry heat filling his lungs. Tony pulls back as he coughs involuntarily. 

“See? Nothing to do with alcohol.” Tony says lightly, but there is an edge to her wide eyes. “You wanna-” 

“Sure!” 

Martin waits with bated breath as she lights up again, and takes another drag. They both lean in this time. Martin doesn’t splutter so much. They do it again. And again. 

The fifth time Tony just puts the cigarette out. 

Kissing is nice. It’s a lot wetter than he thought it would be, but in a good way, somehow. They get into the rhythm of it, as he lets Tony pull him along. She is way better at it. 

Martin tells her this, between breaths. Tony laughs and presses her lips to his neck. 

They do that, for a while. Tony’s hands wander over his face and neck, and then his side, and then his- 

Martin jerks back as she slips a hand under his shirt. “Please don’t- I'm- I'm sorry, I-” 

Tony is nodding quickly, rosebud lips set in a hard line. “Yeah, I thought so. You’re not _gay_ , right?” 

“I...” Is he? He liked kissing her. But he’s never kissed anyone else, maybe he just likes kissing. But not anything else? Is that a thing? Is he broken, somehow? But he likes to look at her. No one’s ever been _interesting_ like her. The thought of calling her _his girlfriend_ sends a thrill through him, but _being_ a girlfriend- 

“It’s alright. Really.” It doesn’t look alright. Tony is blinking very hard. A curl of smoke drifts from her nose. No, not smoke. 

Fog. 

“God, I just- _fuck, why do you do this to yourself?_ ” she hisses, clenching her fists. Louder she says, “We better go in. Break’s definitely over by now.” She stalks past, and Martin catches her wrist. 

“Tony, I-” 

“It’s fine,” she says quietly, detaching herself, and goes to fix her ponytail. 

Tony always has something to do when he tries to talk to her, after that. He gets clumsier; the boss fires him a week later after his third consecutive broken plate. It’s probably for the best, anyway. Whenever they would meet eyes accidentally, vapour would roll out of her mouth. Enough to fill the room, on busy shifts. It was getting hard to see. 

He notices it more, now. Maybe it was always there, and he thought they was just smokers, but now he’s looking, the fog is everywhere. Curling around certain ankles, being worn, being breathed. He tries to dodge these people, when he can. He always feels so cold if he brushes by. He takes other cautions- waiting until other people open doors before he goes through them, or losing himself in crowds. He reminds himself that Mum will be in the next room when he opens his bedroom door. He writes more. 

He starts keeping plants. 

It was Lucy’s idea- giving out cutting of her spider plants as a going-away present. “Literally just water them and don’t put them in direct light, and you’ll be fine.” she said. “It’ll grow little spider-babies, and you can cut them off and pot them and you’ll have a garden!” 

It certainly can’t hurt to get some fresh air in the flat. They’ll brighten up the place. Martin doesn’t really know about feng shui, but he’s pretty sure that it says to put a plant in the room, even a fake one, and the room will have better energy. 

It’ll be nice to look after something, he thinks, as Mum casts a cold look at the small bag of potting soil. 


End file.
